


(May All Your Wounds) Be Mortal

by everyperfectsummer



Series: Tumblr Prompts [27]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Female Barry Allen, I'm Sorry, I'm not sorry, that is not an incorrect tag, yes it's fm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 04:45:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10325888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everyperfectsummer/pseuds/everyperfectsummer
Summary: Prompt: When she was little, she was cursed to kill anyone she fell in love with. Instead of becoming a hermit, she tasked herself to fall in love with Earth’s most despicable human beings.





	

She’s fallen in love with people she hates, time and time again. It’s not as hard as she thought it would be. It doesn’t take rose colored glasses, believing people to be better than they are. She’s not sure it would even work like that - that would be loving an ideal, not a person. No, it takes seeing people as they truly are, all the bad -- and yes, all the good, even in supervillains, even in the man who killed her parents -- and loving them anyway.

 

She is well able to hate someone and love them at the same time. Lucky, given what she is, how she lives, the things that have led her to sit in this hospital room, on this day, by her husband’s side.

 

“So this is how an evil man dies,” he muses, staring absently out the window, making no move towards the morphine pump despite a certain stiffness in his movements that tells her he’s in a lot of pain.

 

“There’s good in you, Len,” she tells him, for what seems like the thousandth time.

 

He smirks, a shadow of his former vigor in his eyes. “Nice to know that they teach you heroes to see everyone as essentially good.”

 

Barry shakes her head, deciding, for once, to tell him the truth.

 

“Not everyone. There are bad people, and I’ve met them, loved them. And you are, too, from a utilitarian point of view.” She trails off into silence, before continuing, “I knew from the beginning that the world would be better off without you in it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t good in you, and that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

 

She squeezes his hand, tears welling up in her eyes. “Of all the people I’ve chosen to love, Leonard Snart, you’re the only one I’ll regret losing.”

 

“The only one you’ll regret killing, you mean.”

 

Somehow, she’s not as shocked as she should be. “I guess I should’ve guessed that you knew all along.”

 

“A beautiful hero has affairs with the Reverse Flash, then Zoom, then Savitar, before they all die of natural causes?” His eternal smirk widens. “I guessed it was poison, some sort of game where I could outwit you. I never guessed it was love that killed them.”

 

She smiles at him, tears streaming down her face. “A curse, when I was little,” she explains. “Doomed to kill anyone I fell in love with. My parents were so worried about me,” she sniffles, grabbing a tissue and continuing with a sad attempt at a laugh, “guess they should’ve been more worried about themselves.”

 

“Anyone who knows you will always be more worried about you than themselves,” Len told her. “Even me.”

 

“You’re the one who’s dying!”

 

Len just looks at her, smirk turning into a real smile, before he closes his eyes.

 

She waits, still holding his hand, for hours afterwards, but he doesn’t open them again.

  
Leaning forward to kiss him on the forehead, she whispers, “The world will be better off without you in it. But not my world.”


End file.
